Welcome to the Sonoma Group's Forest Protection Committee. The Forest Protection Committee believes that climate protection strategies, including forest conservation, have become critically important, and there is urgent work to be done in Sonoma County to protect our local forests The Sonoma Group encompasses all Sierra Club members (about 6,000) living in Sonoma County. For more information, contact Jay Halcomb halcomb@sonic.net or call 707-869-3302.

Environmentalists Defeat Bohemian Grove Logging Plan

Judge René-Auguste Chouteau of the Sonoma County Superior Court on March 10 ruled that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal-Fire) violated the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to consider a single feasible alternative in approving the Bohemian Club's 100-year logging plan. In so doing, the Court questioned how Cal-Fire could consider clearcutting as potentially feasible, but reject the public's request for reduced harvesting alternatives. As a result of Cal-Fire's errors, the Court granted the petition for writ of mandate and set aside Cal-Fire's approval of the plan.

The ruling in the case against the Bohemian Club and CALFIRE, brought by the Sierra Club and the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club, is a victory for environmentalists who waged a David and Goliath-style battle in an effort to scale back logging in the Bohemian Grove, a roughly 2,700-acre property near Guerneville, about 75 miles north of San Francisco.

"The ruling is significant because it requires CALFIRE to consider reasonable alternatives that are less damaging to the environment," said Paul Carroll, the attorney who successfully argued the case in Santa Rosa.

Environmentalists had objected to an aggressive Non-industrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) that would allow the Bohemian Club to log in the Bohemian Grove, the Club's elite enclave on the Russian River. The Sierra Club suit maintained that the Bohemian Club had initially overstated the amount of timber that could be sustainably harvested and that even after revisions the plan still attempted to log too much, under a dubious claim of reducing fire danger.

"This decision requires CALFIRE to consider less damaging alternatives, including reduced rates of harvest," said John Hooper, a long time forest activist and former Bohemian Club member whose objections to the logging plan led to the lawsuit. The heart of the decision is to require CDF to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by considering meaningful alternative feasible rates of harvesting and not just the selection of silviculture methods.

In his ruling the judge wrote "...CDF does not adequately explain its failure to consider a reduced harvest alternative .... The reduction or elimination of environmental impact caused by the project does not relieve CDF of its responsibility to consider feasible project alternatives ... Several comments did propose consideration of a potentially feasible alternative, that being the harvesting of a reduced number of board feet on an annual or decadal basis. If the department has concluded that there are no feasible alternatives, it must explain in meaningful detail the basis for that conclusion."

In 2001, while a member of the Bohemian Club, Hooper hiked the outlying acres of the Bohemian Grove about 75 miles north of San Francisco. He came upon large old-growth redwoods and Douglas fir that had been tagged for harvest. Hooper became worried when he learned that the Bohemian had applied for a permit (NTMP) to harvest 1.13 to 1.8 million board feet per year, citing the need for fire prevention.

As a result of criticisms, the Bohemians withdrew and eventually downsized its NTMP both in 2007 and 2009. Their final application, resubmitted in 2009, still offered no "feasible alternatives" to their proposed timber plan, as CEQA requires. CALFIRE approved the plan anyway, just two days before stronger regulations protecting Russian River salmon and steelhead took effect. Concerned about the need to uphold the integrity of CEQA regulations, the Sierra Club and the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club filed suit in January 2010.

"From start to finish, this was clearly a logging project, not a project to reduce fire hazard," said Philip Rundel, Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. "The harvest rates and cutting schedules outstripped the plan's claims of sustained yield, based on the volume of trees present and their rates of growth."

The Bohemian Club is synonymous with power, wealth and influence. Founded in San Francisco in 1872 by a group of journalists, artists and musicians, the Club soon began to accept government leaders and wealthy industrialists as permanent members. Members pay $25,000 or more to join the exclusive, male-only Club in addition to annual dues, which entitle them to participate in summer "encampments" held each summer at the Bohemian Grove. The Bohemian Club is estimated to have 2,500 members. Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Rockefeller, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, the Koch brothers, the Bechtel family, and Clint Eastwood, are among the more illustrious members. Local Bohemians include musicians Steve Miller, and Mickey Hart and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead.

"Today's victory shows that no matter how influential a group may be, it is not exempt from the law," said Rick Coates, Executive Director of Forest Unlimited in Guerneville and a veteran of many forest preservation battles.

"Now that the court has rejected the Bohemian Club's NTMP permit we will be working closely with CALFIRE and the Bohemian Club to come up with a new timber management plan," said Jay Halcomb, Chair of the Redwood Chapter, Sierra Club. "In a way, our work is just beginning. We hope it will proceed in a more constructive manner than in the past. Restoring old-growth stocks will help California to combat climate change." The Bohemian Grove contains magnificent redwoods and Douglas firs, including some more than 1,000 years old.

Read the entire ruling by Superior Court Judge Chouteau

Contacts: John Hooper, Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club, 415 626-8880
Jay Halcomb, Redwood Chapter Chair, Sierra Club, 707-869-3302.
Paul Carroll, Sierra Club Attorney 650-839-8644

History follows. See also Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club

Suit filed to prevent Bohemian Club over-logging

On December 29, 2009, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) approved the Bohemian Club’s nonindustrial timber management plan (NTMP) for the Bohemian Grove, a mixed conifer forest of 2,500-plus acres near the town of Monte Rio in Sonoma County. On January 28th a group of environmentalists and local citizens represented by the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club and the Sierra Club (Redwood Chapter & Sonoma Group) filed a legal petition against CDF to halt implementation of the NTMP.

The Bohemian Grove represents one of the most remarkable remnant stands of old- growth and late successional redwood and fir forest within Sonoma County, and the property includes two direct tributaries of the Russian River. It is in some respects comparable to the publicly owned Armstrong Grove in Sonoma County or to Muir Woods in Marin County. The controversial NTMP, originally filed with CDF in May 2006, was approved just days before the landowner would have come under stricter regulations to protect steelhead and salmon. The NTMP proposes to aggressively log the property under the rubric of “a Healthy Forest Initiative” - ostensibly but dubiously in order to reduce fire danger. Although the Bohemian Club continues to assert that the NTMP's only goals are to restore old growth forest characteristics and to reduce fire hazard, both these claims have been rejected by several experts as contrary to modern forestry science.

Why is this important? - An NTMP differs from the more usual timber harvesting plan (THP) in having no set expiration date and it may allow for logging in perpetuity. Also, after the NTMP is approved by CDF, the public and relevant state agencies such as the Dept. of Fish and Game and Water Quality have reduced opportunity to monitor the long term effects of logging operations while the mechanisms for making necessary environmental adjustments to the plan to allow for altered circumstances are unclear and not transparent.

The first submission of this logging plan would have first doubled, then tripled, the historical rate under which the Grove has been logged until now. Although subsequently reduced the approved logging rate is still unreasonably high and the NTMP would allow the Bohemian Club to log the Grove for the next 100 years with limited environmental review and regulatory oversight.

The Bohemian Club got off on the wrong foot with both the public and government agencies in its original 2006 draft by proposing un-sustainably high harvest levels and by failing to disclose the existence of significant stands of old growth redwoods and Douglas-fir on its property. During an extended 3 1/2 year review process, the NTMP was redrafted several times in response to serious concerns on the part of environmentalists, experts and the local community and to meet legal requirements. Most NTMPs take around 6 months to get approved. However, during that prolonged review period, the Bohemian Club appears to have put more effort into revising the rhetoric of the plan to make it sound more environmentally progressive than to improve its management strategy. During the past 31/2 years, the Bohemian Club has consistently refused to meet or discuss matters involving its logging plan in spite of repeated attempts to talk from critics of the plan. "The Bohemian Club has forced the filing of a lawsuit which would have most likely been unnecessary had the Club been willing to sit down with its critics,” said Jay Halcomb of the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The approved plan continues to pay only lip service to managing the property toward restoration of old growth forest characteristics and reducing fire hazard rather than actually developing credible plans to achieve these goals. "These stated goals sound commendable, but, in actuality, you cannot harvest your way to restoration of old growth characteristics or reduce fire hazard by commercial logging in redwood forests," stated John Hooper of the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club .

From its inception, the NTMP generated public and expert opposition as a result of miscalculations and unscientific claims. Scientists strongly criticized its assertions that, for example, old growth forests were characterized by relatively small, widely-spaced trees, and that redwood groves were prone to catastrophic crown fires. It took members of the public to uncover the fact that the NTMP miscalculated sustained yield and proposed to log more than the forest grew, an error so fundamental as to defy belief. Despite the public’s efforts, the final iteration of the plan violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Forest Practice Act (FPA) on numerous grounds.

1. The NTMP’s treatment of alternatives, for example, makes a mockery of CEQA’s most important requirement. Under CEQA, CDF is required to consider a range of reasonable alternatives to the proposed project. CDF violated these and related laws, regulations and rules in approving the NTMP. The NTMP gives “detailed examination” only to two alternatives, the no project alternative, which is required in every case, and the so-called “alternative approach to harvesting.” This is not a range of reasonable alternatives as CEQA requires. In addition, all of the alternatives considered were either more damaging and/or infeasible, rather than less damaging and feasible, as CEQA requires.
2. The NTMP’s treatment of the project “baseline” is no better. Under CEQA, a plan must define the baseline, the reference against which the plan’s impacts are measured. The NTMP violated this requirement, because it changes the baseline to avoid acknowledging adverse effects.
3. The NTMP fails to identify, evaluate, and mitigate all of the project’s significant environmental effects. An NTMP must identify, evaluate, and mitigate the possible significant environmental impacts of the proposed project. For example, the NTMP fails to calculate or even estimate the project’s greenhouse gas emissions. The NTMP states that the significance of the project’s effects regarding greenhouse gas emissions may be measured according to the extent the project “could help or hinder attainment of the state’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020 as stated in the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.” The project failed this test: During its first 20 years, the project shows a decline in carbon stocking, thus hindering the state’s 2020 goal.
4. The NTMP fails to adequately consider cumulative impacts. An NTMP must analyze the project’s cumulative impacts. This NTMP does not describe and analyze the incremental effects of related projects in combination with the incremental effects of the present project. In these respects the NTMP hinders rather than helps achieve the goal of salmon restoration in the lower Russian River as required by the Biological Opinion, a 15-year recovery plan to implement the mandates of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) as they relate to threatened and endangered fish in the Russian River and its tributaries. This NTMP contemplates scores of logging operations over the next 100 years. But it does not describe a single operation, including its location, size, sequence, silviculture, yarding method, whether there will be winter operations, or any other relevant information, let alone analyze how those operations may combine with other similar operations and projects to effect the environment. Rather than identify and analyze the incremental effects of this project in combination with others, the NTMP concludes that standard mitigations will obviate such impacts. It identifies a resource, describes it, and then concludes that it will not be cumulatively impacted because of the Forest Practice Rules. This rationale, however, has been rejected as contrary to the concept of cumulative impacts.

The Bohemian Club is missing a wonderful opportunity to practice true forest restoration on an unusually ecologically valuable property. “This could be a very important building block where the Bohemian Club could work with restoration groups and think in terms of habitat corridors, rather than look like a greedy absentee landlord with little concern for the outside world,” said John Hooper of the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club. View a video about the logging plan at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew4_aYhEE8E

For further information, contact:
Jay Halcomb, 707-869-3302, halcomb@sonic.net
John Hooper, 415-626-8880, hooparb@aol.com
Dan Kerbein, 707-481-3903, dkerbein@att.net
See also: http://www.bohemiangrovelogging.org/

An editorial reply: Close to Home re Bohemian Club logging plan designed to confuse the public

Predictably, Mr. Hansel, supporting the Bohemian Club's logging plan, leads off his recent Close to Home by invoking the fear of forest fire when in reality a number of experts have expressed concerns that the Bohemian Club's logging plan will increase fire danger. Mr. Hansel asserts that the Bohemian Club is acting to ensure the safety of the Grove's neighbors without explaining why the majority of neighbors who commented on the logging plan are opposed to it.

Our own earlier article asserted that the Bohemian Club's logging plan would turn the forest into a commercial logging tract, a comparison which Mr Hansel calls "inflammatory and misleading". We are saddened that Mr. Hansel resorts to name-calling as this is an important debate. However uncomfortable for the Bohemian Club, our article did nothing more than tell the story accurately. We ask the public to judge for itself. The following list summarizes the logging regime the plan calls for; the public can decide whether or not it would convert the property into a logging tract. The plan proposes to:

1. Cut between 1 million and 1.7 million board feet of redwood and Douglas fir every year in perpetuity, doubling the historic logging rate which resulted in 11 million board feet being removed in the past 25 years. This increased logging rate translates into 250 to 425 logging trucks coming out of the Grove onto Bohemian Highway every year.
2. Cut 40% of the larger Douglas fir trees in the first 20 year cycle of harvesting alone.
3. Allow one acre harvest openings in the forest across 20% of the property at any given time.
4. Reduce the canopy cover to 60% across the whole property from an average of 80%-90% now.
5. Apply the herbicide Arsenal on 60 acres of land per year. 200 acres have already been treated.
6. Continue to expand the logging road system on the property which has fragmented the property in the past 25 years.
7. Allows the removal of conifers, road and trail construction, construction of buildings even within the Conservation Easements which the Bohemian Club created in order to reduce its acreage enough to qualify for this NTMP.
8. After 100 years of logging, the forest will only achieve a stocking level of 47,000 board feet per acre. Contrary to the Bohemian Club's assertions, this low stocking level will not result in a forest restored to old growth characteristics - including attaining the carbon sequestration levels achievable by reduced cutting

We compared the Bohemian Grove to Armstrong State Reserve; the comparison has nothing to do with whether we have ever visited the Bohemian Grove. It is well-established that the Bohemian Grove and Armstrong represent the two largest remaining stands of old growth redwood and Douglas fir on the lower Russian River. This is precisely why the public cares about ensuring that the Bohemian Grove is as well-protected as Armstrong.

Mr. Hansel mentions Professor Sillett as an expert who supports its logging plan. Certainly Prof. Sillett is an acknowledged expert in the field of redwood ecology but he occupies a Chair at Humboldt State which is funded by a prominent member of the Bohemian Club who is an outspoken advocate of increased logging. The public has a right to know this conflict of interest in weighing Sillett's endorsement.

We accurately stated that not all the old growth redwood and Douglas fir on the property has been identified, mapped and marked to protect it. Only those areas representing potential Marbled Murrelet habitat are shown on maps and then only vaguely. The original NTMP submitted by the Bohemian Club in 2006 failed to disclose the existence of any old growth on the property.

The only reason a lawsuit had to be filed over this issue is that for more than three years the Bohemian Club has consistently refused to enter into dialogue to resolve the differences between the two sides. Now they are being required by law to enter settlement discussions which environmentalists have repeatedly invited them to engage in.

We also note that:

1. The Sierra Club supports sustainable logging, which is a necessity and a great benefit to all of us.
2. f it weren't for the Sierra Club it is unlikely that these would exist: Redwood National Park, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, or Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Jay Halcomb (Guerneville) and Dan Kerbein (Sebastopol) Redwood Chapter, Sierra Club

Media often fail in their global warming coverage, says climate researcher "The U.S. has to walk the walk if they expect to talk the talk and convince China and India and Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico ... into following suit. We have to clean up our own act... "

Garcia River Forest Climate Action Project -- A better way.

Australian Broadcasting Company -- Good forestry can help fight climate change

Sacramento Bee, Sunday, August 5, 2007-- CalPERS vineyard venture attacked: North Coast project will worsen global warming, critics say

Healdsburg, California (PRWEB) April 5, 2007 -- Organic vineyard & winery uses solar power as integral part of sustainable business.

A forest landowner in Mendocino County was recently assessed a fine of $105,600 dollars

Environmentalists fight vineyards' spread

Why local forests deserve protection

Gualala River Steelhead Studies - Website of a fisheries biologist "The River's future hangs to a large degree on [the vineyard] issue. Any future conversions of the landscape to vineyards inevitably comes at a cost in terms of Juvenile Steelhead habitat, as the watershed's hydrodynamics are inextricably altered."

Wine country casualties
Grape-eating bears killed as vineyards' territory expands (SF Chron). Wildlife is often the loser as vineyards steadily creep into the hinterlands.

Timberland-to-vineyard rules before supervisors

What's Wrong with "No Net Loss"?

Nowhere Near No Net Loss

Pursuing the Perfect Grape

Pinot craze sows seeds of conflict

Preservation Ranch

Forest Conversion Resolution (Mar 2007)

Letter to BOS (12/13/05)

Sonoma County Timberland Ordinance

Sonoma County General Plan Update

SC and SCCA Press Release, 12/09/05

Letter to BOS (10/4/05)

Letter to BOS (8/23/05)

BOS Pictures

Planning Commission Letter (5/26/05)

Planning Commission Mtg (4/21/05)

Option 3 as Originally Intended